August 31, 2016: Google made big news last week when it announced that web sites running “interstitials” (AKA pop-ups) are risking being downranked on mobile SERPS.
In an August 23rd update published to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, Product Manager Doantam Phan wrote:
Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.
Phan took pains to point out that not all interstitial ads are bad; only “intrusive interstitals.” “Responsible interstitials” include:
- Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
- Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
- Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.
How marketers should respond
Google’s move against interstitials isn’t completely unexpected; in fact, in August of 2015, Google spokesman Gary Ilyes hinted that interstitials could someday be used as a negative ranking factor.
But many site proprietors appear to have been been caught unawares by the August 23rd announcement, and some clearly aren’t happy about Google’s latest foray into user experience issues arising outside of its own network of properties. As Didit’s Kevin Lee observes, “many publishers and marketers using interstitials already feel Google meddles with their consumer relationships and of course, don’t like that Google is in a position to be judge, jury and executioner.”
Fortunately, Google has given them plenty of time to create workarounds or modify existing interstitials so that they conform with its new guidelines. Disabling or replacing non-conforming interstitials will not likely entail the expenditure of much time and labor (unlike Mobilegeddon-style UX issues, which often required deep dives into back-end issues before all issues were fully resolved).
Google has indicated that any ranking penalty applied to a page with an interstitial running on it will apply only to that page, not to the entire site.
Furthermore, as noted on thesempost.com, Google has indicated that any ranking penalty applied to a page with an interstitial running on it will apply only to that page, not to the entire site. This distinction is important because marketers may be using non-organic search tactics (for example, social or direct referral strategies) to drive users to pages where interstitials are present, and can continue to do so without fear of suffering any global site-wide penalty. Provided they have no illusions about these pages ranking on mobile SERPs (or the potential negative effect they’ll have on mobile users, an increasingly important user constituency, they can continue using interstitials – even intrusive ones – for as long as they choose to.
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